Like A Whisper
by Jenwryn
Summary: Joan/John, which is to say, Joan and the Doctor as Mr Smith. This is a story which considers the predicament of Joan Redfern when the Doctor leaves. Based on, and thus spoilers for, episodes 3.08 & 3.09 of the Tenth Doctor. My first in this fandom. R&R?


_Disclaimer: All publicly recognisable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. Original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended. Not beta read, don't smack me for it. _

_A/N: Apparently my muse is speeding at the moment. What's this, four new fandoms in less than a week? Very disturbing. Still, I've been a Whovian since, well, forever – it's one of the few shows I remember my family sitting down to watch religiously before I was even at school (Darleks gave me nightmares), and so I can't really consider myself as a newbie to this one. Still, newbie to writing fic for it! _

_This piece relates directly to the Tenth Doctor, in particular the story that overlaps episodes 3.08 and 3.09, where we meet the character Joan Redfern… from whose point-of-view this little ficlet is narrated. You'll have to have seen the episodes for this to make sense, I would imagine. _

_Some of the ideas in this piece came from a conversation I had with a friend: love you, hon._

* * *

**Like A Whisper**

She sits at the desk. A worn black journal, a pen and ink, are spread before her. The pages of the journal ruffle slightly in the breeze left to wander through the half-ajar window. The breeze brings with it the scent of jasmine and high evening, but the woman doesn't notice. She doesn't notice the sound of the trees muttering in the garden outside, either, because while her body is present and accounted for, her heart and her senses are lost elsewhere.

She was a widow when she met him. She'd been mourning her one love lost, wholly secure in the widow's knowledge that she would never love again. It was a dark security, a painful one, but as familiar and as constant as a family member who beats you yet is still beloved. We can all become accustomed to anything, each and everyone of us, given enough time. Time, pouring through the egg-counter like sacred salts, is the key to such dark securities; the key to existing. And yet – and yet – a reason to be alive is not the same as a reason to live… Her fingers touch at the stained leather of the journal as absently as butterflies on ivy.

So sure, she'd been, and then there he was, present in her life like the arrival of a persistent whisper, like a rumour that just refuses to go away, or like the sound playing just beyond your range of hearing which worries at your ear-drums with a hornet's buzz. Arrived, he did, and she learnt to love again. Learnt to love _him_, even as he learnt to love her.

Love.

Love, which she'd believed herself lucky to find the first time, just the once, and which she'd been impossibly pleased to stumble upon again. Pleased, blessed – and frightened, because she knew with a widow's knowledge the pain that love can bring. The pain always worth bearing. The pain you never want to bear again. The pain you can't resist when offered it. Pain, and love, and there he was, appearing in her life, her Mister Smith, and really hers.

She could see it in his face, see it in the way he looked at her; those eyes of his, oh those eyes. She could see it in them, caught up in the emotion that they felt, the eyes of a man who'd never expected to feel the way that he did.

It was the unexpected thing

He loved her.

She loved him.

Impossible, to be so blessed. Incredible, to know it.

And so he was hers and she was his, for oh such a brief moment in time. Her and her Mister Smith.

The breeze paws lightly at the window, swinging the shutter forth and back against the jasmine and the ivy, brushing the scent in amongst her bound hair. She blinks, and shifts the ink to one side, the bottle gleaming amber and casting shadows of lit gold across the desk.

All changed, all changed, all changed, and nothing stays the same, nothing but the one constant: he is no longer hers, he is the Doctor and not hers, but she is still his.

Widowed again, widow of a man who'd never existed.

But oh, how he had existed!

She pulls the journal towards her. It is his journal, his stains of ink and worry, his flights of imagination, his pages filled with his dreams and his self. She pulls it towards her and turns through the pages until she reaches the place where his familiar script ends wiht a smudge and a whisper. Then she fills her own pen, raises her hand, smoothes the page_—_

And starts to write the beginning of their end.


End file.
